the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

50 QUMRAN AND THE ENOCH GROUPS
population, yet not completely isolated from the common social and religious
institutions of Israel. 30 Echoing the language of the Temple Scroll and
4QMMT [4Q394–399], the Damascus Document speaks of people living in
the “city of the Temple” (CD 12.1–2) or in “the camp” (10.23), as well as
living in the “cities of Israel” (12.19) or in the “camps” (7.6; 19.2), people
“who take women and beget children” (7.6–7; cf. 12.1–2; 15.5–6), and are
“owners” of properties (9.10–16), have a job and earn a salary (14.12–17),
and attend the Temple in Jerusalem and offer sacrifices (12.17–21; 16.13–14).
At the same time, however, the Damascus Document has an unmistakably
sectarian trait that is missing in the previous Enochic literature and that
makes it the forerunner of the sectarian literature of Qumran. The
Damascus Document already presupposes the existence of a special group,
that of the followers of the “Righteous Teacher,” a group having its own
separate identity within the Enochic-Essene movement, and it gives people
no other choice but “entering” the new community “in order to atone
for their sins” (4.4–10).
The best way to reconcile the evidence seems to me that of interpreting
the document as the initial attempt of the community of the
Righteous Teacher to define itself in relation to its parent movement.
The Damascus Document was a pre-Qumranic document that was written
by a sectarian elite in an attempt to gain the leadership of the larger
Enochic-Essene movement. The parent movement is presented not as a
contemporary phenomenon but as a group that belongs to the past.
They are righteous precursors that have prepared the way for the
preaching of the Righteous Teacher and now have to stand aside in
favor of the new leadership, which fulfills the Enochic ideals. In its
comprehensive approach, the Damascus Document is not detached and
disinterested. It betrays the determination to regulate the lives of the
members of the parent movement, either living in Jerusalem or in
camps. No right to self-determination is assigned to them; on the contrary,
they are required to accept the leadership of an elite that claims
special authority from God.
The move was highly controversial and was not unchallenged within
the Essene party. Credit goes to the “Groningen hypothesis” 31 for showing
that the sectarian literature of Qumran, especially the pesharim, contains
some intriguing allusions to the parting of the ways between
Qumran and its parent movement.
30. García Martínez and Trebolle Barrera, The People of the DSS, 58.
31. Florentino García Martínez and Adam S. van der Woude, “A Groningen
Hypothesis of Qumran Origins and Early History,” RevQ 14 (1990): 521–41.